Rounds for 8/15/2007

Hmmm… I continue to be impressed with how quickly time’s been zipping by. Things are getting busier at work, in large part because I’ve started supervising a rotation in evidence-based medicine – I consider this, from a pure philosophy standpoint, to be the most important contribution I can make in my job, so I’m a bit preoccupied with hammering it out into a useful thing. The other piece of distraction has been getting things straightened out as much as possible before Laura returns to the area in a couple of weeks, and we depart for the glorious madhouse that is Dragon*Con.

The North Carolina trip was wonderful, as I’ll brief you on shortly. For now, let’s say that Trinoc*coN 8 was a bit lame, while the belatedly-dubbed Murcon 2 was not.

This past weekend, I had the good fortune of blowing off a bit of steam with a couple of tribemates. Friday evening, I visited Tee and family for a relaxing evening, highlights of which included recording some audio for a couple of podcast projects, and finally trying the Remarkable and Partakable (so the bottle says) Breckenridge Vanilla Porter. This I found to be a bit less of the former and a bit more of the latter, but an excellent brew overall. We also watched the pilot episode of the SciFi Channel‘s re-imagining of Flash Gordon, which offended us so much that we recorded an impromptu special edition of the Survival Guide to Writing Fantasy about it. Be warned that the episode is, essentially, a long and geeky rant/conversation that is only tangentially related to writing, but it was quite fun to do.

I decided to try the full-color edition of Kill Doctor Lucky as the monkey-inclusive family game of the evening, which went over fairly well. Laura and I have played it several times, and it works well with a mid-sized group in a family setting – the theme is similar to Clue, only the goal is to actually commit the murder, not solve it. The younger monkey was a bit far out of the age range, and so got to “help Dr. Cmar play” (although he clearly thought the experience was totally airwolf anyway), while the elder monkey tried his own hand at the game. Due in large part to fatigue from a long day outside, the monkeys were having a hard time focusing, so we “allowed” Command Line to win so that they could get to bed.

We finished off the night with an excellent game I’d not played before – Sunken City. Although it has several different mechanics involved in-game, it is elegantly simple to play, with a reasonable amount of strategic depth, and ended up being very enjoyable. I definitely plan on seeking this one out in the future, especially as it (somewhat unusually for a Eurogame) supports two players, although I suspect that three (as we played it) or four gives a more interesting experience.

Overall, a great recharge to the batteries, although I must admit they’re already mostly drained again… feh! That said, all is truly well. Laura continues to be well-occupied and thriving in China. Next post, the weekend of two cons recap…